The Iron Mills By Rebecca Harding Davis Essay - 1831 Words

Throughout Cultural Perspectives, many influential texts have been read, analyzed, and discussed. One text, Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis, integrates the thoughts of quite a few authors that have been discussed this semester. Through employing a Marxist view of history—there are always the â€Å"haves† and the â€Å"have-nots†Ã¢â‚¬â€one can see that Life in the Iron Mills exemplifies the struggles that face many â€Å"have-not† citizens throughout history. One can then see the clear connections to various authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, W.E.B. DuBois, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, and Adam Smith. Life in the Iron Mills is a tragic yet poignant story of the effects of a man’s socioeconomic status. Although set in the nineteenth century, the story is all too familiar. The short story begins with a reflective narrator begging the audience to read the story with an open mind not tainted by the ideals of high society (Davis). The narrator suggests the story be read from the perspective of the protagonist, Hugh Wolfe, a lowly puddler at the iron mill (Davis). Hugh works long, hard hours at the mill for little to no pay in attempts to provide not only for himself but also for his cousin, Deborah, and a young girl, Janey (Davis). In Hugh’s spare time at the mill, he carves sculptures out of korl (Davis). Hugh leads a typical life of a working class citizen. One night, the owner and a few other upper class men visited the mill to examine the furnaces (Davis). As theyShow MoreRelatedThe Iron Mill By Rebecca Harding Davis997 Words   |  4 PagesIn Life in the Iron Mills, Rebecca Harding Davis tells the story of Hugh Wolfe, a lower-class man whose love of beauty and desire to move up in the world ultimately leads to his mental decline and demise. Wolfe lives in a town of smothering grey smog and works in an iron mill reminiscent of Hell, places that induce hopelessness and despair by appearance. In contrast to his surroundings, Wolfe possesses a fierce love of beauty and a talent of sculpting with korl, both of which are frequently associatedRead MoreLife in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis797 Words   |  3 PagesSimilar to other critics, â€Å"Life in the Iron Mills† by Rebecca Harding Davis, is a sentimental story with an ending that changes the tone of the story. As suggested by the majority of this text, there was n ot to be a favorable ending for the characters as the narrator portrays them so pessimistically; the very first passage begins â€Å"Is this the end? O Life, as futile, then, as frail! What hope of answer is redress?† (p.51). The text might have had a more completed ending with the protagonist, HughRead MoreThe Industrial Revolution Of The Iron Mill By Rebecca Harding Davis1070 Words   |  5 PagesThe industrial revolution was a time of invention, progress and opportunity. However, there was also a darker side to it all. Rebecca Harding Davis, author of Life in the Iron Mills, tells the story of ironworker Hugh Wolfe from a first-person narrator’s point of view. This unnamed narrator of an unspecified gender is part of the more privileged class of society. This person resides in the house that the two protagonists of the story, Hugh and Debora Wolfe, used to live in. The higher-ups of thisRead MoreThis essay is an analysis of the story the Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis.1820 Words   |  8 PagesIn Life in the Iron Mills Rebecca Harding Davis reveals a growing industrial America in the nineteenth century, where an unbelievable level of poverty and limited opportunities of achieving success can cause individuals to take extreme risks to attain a descent lifestyle. Through the novella, Davis illustrates the distinct differences between upper and lower class lifestyles. Immigrant workers, Debora (lovingly called Deb) and Hugh, take the reader to a time when people were used as productionRead MoreLiterary Realism Of The Iron Mills And The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1388 Words   |  6 Pagesthe reader, social injustice may be dealt with. Two examples that use form to reach the end goal of compassion are Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills uses an embedded narrative to tell the story of Deb and Hugh, and the daily struggles of Deb’s life. Life in the Iron Mills was written in 1861, two years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. The goal of this story is to feel compassionRead MoreSusan Glaspell s A Jury Of Her Peers And Flannery O Connor s Good Country People Essay1696 Words   |  7 Pagesoppression of women, there is much that can be learned by looking back at problematic situations portrayed by women writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Out of all of the texts written by women only three will be discussed; Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron-Mills, Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers and Flannery O’Connor’s Good Country People, in which specific symbols are used as representations of the ways in which women were oppressed and how important it is to study these texts todayRead MoreThe Reception And Influence Of Rebe cca Harding Davis2118 Words   |  9 Pagesthe need to speak out for others, especially the lower classes. However, Rebecca Harding Davis observed the suffering of all humanity and decided to give everyone a voice through her writings. Throughout her career, Davis wrote an innumerable amount of works advocating for equal rights among all people, right up until her death in 1910. The following paper will analyze and discuss the reception and influence that Rebecca Harding Davis’s works of literary realism had on the hierarchy of society, in relationRead MoreFeminism During 19th Century American Short Stories4097 Words   |  17 PagesShort Stories Research Question: How is feminism revealed through the divergence of women’s roles in society and their own personal desires in the American short stories â€Å"The Yellow Wall-Paper,† â€Å"The Story of an Hour,† â€Å"The Storm,† and â€Å"Life in the Iron Mills†? Introduction Literature changes as current events change and as the structure of society begins to shift. American feminist literature started to become prevalent during the Victorian era, or around the latter part of the 19th century. This isRead MoreRealism In Life In The Iron Mills1604 Words   |  7 PagesLife in the Iron Mills is a novella that is hard to classify as a specific genre. The genre that fits the most into this novella is realism, because of the separation of classes, the hard work that a person has to put into their every day life to try and make a difference, and the way society influences the actions of people and their relationships. However, no matter what genre is specifically chosen, there will be other genres present that contradict the genre of choice. While the novella showsRead MoreEssay on The Taint of Money in â€Å"Life in the Iron Mills†1653 Words   |  7 PagesRebecca Harding Davis wrote â€Å"Life in the Iron Mills† in the mid-nineteenth centur y in part to raise awareness about working conditions in industrial mills. With the goal of presenting the reality of the mills’ environment and the lives of the mill workers, Davis employs vivid and concrete descriptions of the mills, the workers’ homes, and the workers themselves. Yet her story’s realism is not objective; Davis has a reformer’s agenda, and her word-pictures are colored accordingly. One theme that

The Meaning of Beauty Free Essays

The Meaning of Beauty Man vs. Woman From the beginning we are taught that God created man, and from man he created woman. It’s funny how different a man’s thoughts can be compared to a woman’s, considering the woman was created from the man. We will write a custom essay sample on The Meaning of Beauty or any similar topic only for you Order Now Their views on beauty, amongst other things, prove to be a perfect example of this. Centuries ago the Greeks saw â€Å"[B]eauty as a virtue: A kind of excellence† (Sontag 117). While this is still a shared view between men and women today, they share different views on how this excellence is achieved. Both men and women agree that beauty has two parts, inner and outer; yet men recognize beauty as success, leaning more towards inner beauty, while women recognize beauty as how one looks, leaning more towards outer beauty. It has been observed that â€Å"[w]e not only split off—with the greatest facility—the â€Å"inside† (character, intellect) from the â€Å"outside† (looks); but we are actually surprised when someone who is beautiful is also intelligent, talented, good† (Sontag 118). Both men and women make this mistake, it never fails to amaze people that a person can be smart and good looking at the same time. Society has made it seem like the good looking get everything handed to them because of their physicality; however that is not always true. It is just the fact that it is human nature to immediately observe and judge by the outward appearance according to the worldly views instilled in people growing up, for example: magazines, TV, internet, etc. Both men and women would agree that for millennia â€Å"beauty has continued to lose prestige† (Sontag 118). Women not only have different expectations of beauty compared to men, but also seem to be confused by the definition of beauty itself. Sontag states that a whole society has identified being feminine with caring about how one looks (118). â€Å"Hollywood† has seriously messed up the views of women on the topic of beauty: For the ideal of beauty is administered as a form of self-oppression. Women are taught to see their bodies in parts, and to evaluate each part separately. Breasts, feet, hips, waistline, neck, eyes, nose, complexion, hair, and so on—each in turn is submitted to an anxious, fretful, often despairing scrutiny. (Sontag 119) For women it is not just the thought of a bad appearance during the day, but also the question of how the millions of pieces are contributing to it. Unfortunately, their solutions are not always the wisest. Instead they do what they believe will cure their problems the fastest. Weather it is not eating for that day or coating their faces with make-up in order to cover up that one, little blemish. Women mistake their appearance to be their only form of power. Most women believe â€Å"it is not the power to do but the power to attract† (Sontag 119). No matter how hard a woman works and how far she goes, she must always show that she works just as hard to be attractive, â€Å"[d]amned if they do—women are. And damned if they don’t†¦ [N]othing less than perfection will do† (Sontag 119). A woman can be told thousands of times that there is no such thing as perfection, yet that is what she will always strive to achieve. Men, on the other hand, have very different views on beauty. Men are not beautiful; they are handsome: â€Å"Handsome† is the masculine equivalent of—and refusal of—a complement which has accumulated certain demeaning overtones, by being reserved for women only†¦[T]heir essence is to be strong, or effective, or competent†¦[W]hich is to be identified with caring about what one is and does and only secondarily, if at all, about how one looks. (Sontag 118) Men do not focus on how they look physically, but on what and how much they accomplish. A man would rather be seen as strong and dependable in comparison to skinny and well liked. Men have the view of, take it or leave it. They are more focused on their success, rather than their appearance: In men, good looks is a whole, something taken in at a glance. It does not need to be confirmed by giving measurements of different regions of the body, nobody encourages a man to dissect his appearance, feature by feature. As for perfection, that is considered trivial—almost unmanly. Indeed, in the ideally good-looking man a small imperfection or blemish is considered positively desirable. Sontag 119) Men know that there is no such thing as perfection; therefore they see no reason to shoot for something impossible to obtain. Women see the imperfections in themselves as unacceptable, yet find the blemishes of men attractive. The opposite opinions of men and women on the topic of beauty have continued for years and show no evidence of changing. While men spend their time climbing the career ladder all the way to the top, women focus more on how they will look climbin g that ladder. Men have sustained the belief that beauty is seen as success, while women continue to believe that beauty is all about how one looks. Men and women still hold to their original ideas of beauty, but have found certain ways to individualize themselves too. As time goes on it is becoming clearer that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Works Cited Sontag, Susan. â€Å"Women’s Beauty: Put Down or Power Source? † 75 Readings Plus. Ed. Santi V. Buscemi and Charlotte Smith. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 117-119. Print. How to cite The Meaning of Beauty, Essay examples

Canteen free essay sample

I listed those traits because I know a team leader cannot do anything all by himself/herself thats why a team leader should be like that. 5. Personalities sometimes affect the sport you are in. Theses what I think. 1. Pop rock, beat, psychedelic rock, blues rock and folk rock, which had grown in popularity. 2. Towards the decades end, genres such as baroque pop, sunshine pop, bubblegum pop, progressive rock and heavy metal started to grow popular, with the latter two finding greater success in the allowing decade 3.The success of rock music and bands in the Japan started a new genre, known as Group Sounds, which was popular in the latter half of the decade. What are the advantages of using synthesizers? Allow a much finer resolution than other types of synthesizers with a given reference frequency, save money because they do not need to get instruments for recording. Can produce sound not producible by other instruments and some instruments are impractical to transport such as a piano. We will write a custom essay sample on Canteen or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page

Women Murders Essays - Emily Grierson, Delia Matache,

Women Murders Marriage is a life long commitment between two people. Vows are taken as a promise to one another, " Till Death Do us Part" may be the most well known vow, but with the two women I will be discussing they take it into their own hands to speed up the process. The following stories are about two women who commit murder in some form, perhaps intentional or not who are not punished as far as the story tells us. Fortunately, we have a legal system that is designed to prevent these homicides and programs specifically designed to help women in cases like these that feel they have no other choice but to murder their husband to achieve freedom. As you will see these women were so desperate that they felt murder was their only option. One woman did it for freedom, and the other for companionship, both are murderers any way you put it. Emily Grierson, lived alone in an old " eyesore" of a house that no one had been inside of since she stopped giving china painting lessons ten years ago. She was considered a tradition in her town, and was shown special treatment thanks to a former mayor who'd pardoned her from the rules that applied to negro women at that time. However, the next generation didn't look upon Emily so kindly. Tax forms were constantly mailed to her home, the townspeople found the smell that seeped from her home so unbearable that they snuck onto her property to correct the situation. Emily had no contact with the townspeople, Until she met Homer Barron, a Northerner foreman, notorious for drinking and taking a liking to younger men. Within a few days, Emily and Homer were seen riding together in a buggy, and spending alot of time together. The townspeople thought that the they would marry, but when they heard that Emily bought arsenic they assumed she would kill herself and were happy for her, they said " it would be the best thing ". When the streets were done Homer disappeared, it was assumed that he went to prepare for his marriage to Emily. He returned a few days later and was never seen again. Miss Emily was seen buying a men's toiletry set along with men's clothing including a night shirt, from that point on it is assumed that they are married . Some time after that, Miss Emily passed away. A funeral was held, and once she was in the ground, the townspeople opened up the room that noone had seen in nearly forty years, what they found was quite disturbing. A room set up for a bridal with a man's suit and shoes looked almost as if it were just placed there, with the exception of the dust and discoloring. They found the man it belonged to laying in the bed decomposed with traces of an embrace that had long been unreturned.It was Homer Barron, and the pillow next to him had an indentation with a long strand of iron gray hair resting on it. Miss Emily was unavailable for questioning due to her death, so it is assumed that the arsenic from earlier in the story was not used for rats, but to keep Homer there with her, for fear of loneliness or perhaps she was insane, the author does not disclose this information. I think that she killed him in fear that he would leave her, and this is the first man she would be permitted to see since her father's watchful eyes were no longer around. This is truly a case of homicide, unlike the next story I will discuss where intentional murder is committed in a different way. Delia Jones is a washwoman in a poverty stricken area of Florida. She is married to a man named Sykes who is abusive to her in more ways than one. The verbal abuse is more evident than the physical aspect of it. Delia had to endure years of Sykes comments on her weight and profession, along with being assaulted and tormented by his cruel jokes. Sykes openly has an affair with a fat woman named Bertha. He was paying for her to stay in town, even though Delia was at home cooking and cleaning, trying to make a living. Sykes preys on Delia's fear of snakes from the beginning of the story, first with the whip resting on her shoulder, then he takes it too far and brings home a real snake. After